“When it comes to suffering, she’s right up there with Elizabeth Taylor.”
-Truvy (Dolly Parton)

This morning was my big day out – I had a facial scheduled for 8 a.m. and then a few hours out of the house to kill time before meeting my best friend to shop for outfits for her sister-in-law’s wedding and rehearsal dinner. The facial felt good, and I re-entered the day refreshed and stopped next to get a cappuccino and a Greek yogurt (by the way, the jury is still out on Greek yogurt – I want to love it, but… meh). Then to Target, then Costco and by then it was time to grab a quick bite before meeting BFF at the mall (honey wheat bagel with PB from the local bagel shop).

I recently read a blog post the other day, and the writer described to her best friend – “If our friendship was a person, it’d be old enough to have a driver’s license.” Well, if my friendship with BFF was a person, it’d be old enough to vote and buy cigarettes. We’ve been friends for over half our lives, and we “get” each other. Shopping with her is easy – and I never find shopping easy. We know each other’s quirks and we know where the other lacks body confidence so it’s easy for me to pick things out for her, because I know what to avoid and what she’ll love.

We laughed and shopped and found success within three stores (because we’re so very awesome like that). When we were done, she wanted to stop in the food court to get some lunch, and I joined her as she ate, because it’s been far too long since I’ve seen her and we’ve had a lot of catching up to do. Her cell phone rang while she ate, and she glanced at the caller ID. She didn’t recognize the number, rolled her eyes and said she thought for sure it was probably her husband’s sister, so she’d just call back later. Moments later, her cell phone chirped again as the phone registered a new voice mail. This was odd – anyone who knows BFF knows that she loathes voice mail and never checks it. She meant to ignore it, but I said, “Maybe you ought to check.”

It was her brother’s wife. The message was rushed, garbled and unintelligible. I said, “Maybe you should call her back.”

She dialed her sister-in-law and found that her 17 year old nephew had attempted suicide – and though fortunately, healthwise he is alright, he is in a psychiatric facility for awhile and hopefully they will be able to get him assessed and do what needs to be done to get him on the path to recovery from whatever led him to try to take his life. I could see as BFF talked the signs that she was distressed – her lip would quiver, her eyes would fill up, but as she was mostly listening, I had no idea until she hung up the gravity of what had happened.

My best friend’s husband committed suicide. In fact, it was nearly three years ago that he sealed himself in the garage with the lawn tractor running and died from carbon monoxide poisoning. He suffered from a mental disorder, and she had recently moved away from the home. Getting this call today brought it all bubbling back to the surface for her – as she told me this afternoon, “It’s never far beneath the surface – it’s always right there.”

When her husband killed himself, I had just given birth to my youngest daughter. I was home with a days old baby and engrossed in all that new-baby stuff: nursing, sleep deprivation, balancing out showing my older daughter love and making sure she didn’t feel replaced. At the time, I knew my friend was devastated but it wasn’t until talking to her today that I found how just how truly devastated she was. I didn’t know until today that she wanted to die too, she was so crushed by it all that in her head she thought her kids would be better off without her, that she was bringing people down, that the planet would be better without her on it. And where the hell was I? I said to her, “It makes me feel rotten, that you were hurting so badly, and I wasn’t a very good friend.” She said to me in response, “You had just had a very good thing in your life – there’s no way I would have let you see it. I didn’t let anyone see it. I didn’t let anyone in. No one knew.”

Her husband was abusive. She told me today how he used to threaten her life – she used to travel with him for work, and he’d tell her he could kill her and leave her body there and no one would ever know where to find her. I always knew he was unbalanced – that had always been my fear – that someone somewhere (in my head it was always Texas, for some reason) would find the body of my best friend dead on the side of a dirt road. I didn’t know that he had truly threatened it.

So many things came spilling out over lunch today in the scope of her nephew and how hard it is to survive someone’s suicide. So much I never knew. I had always criticized her judgements (not to her) of some of her relationship decisions, but today it was clearer to me than it had ever been just how much she was hurting and just how much she had been looking for the “good thing” in her life. When she married her current husband, I thought, “It’s too soon, she barely knows him – she’s diving head first into a shallow pond…” but now I see what it is that she saw, what it is she was trying to hold on to, and it makes me feel like shit for passing judgement when I didn’t truly know the whole story. She was in love. He’s a nice guy. She was holding on to something because you don’t let go of something good.

We talked about how everything in our lives brings us to the place where we are. The good stuff, the bad stuff – it all becomes a part of our life story. If she could erase the chapter of the abuse and suicide, would she have known when she met her current husband that this was love? She might not have recognized it. She might not have appreciated it.

“Steel Magnolias” is one of those movies that my BFF and I watch and can quote nearly line-for-line. If I tell her that I “love her more than my luggage” she knows what I’m meaning. If she says she’s going to “paint her door red and call herself Elizabeth Arden”, I know what she’s referring to. But if there ever was a steel magnolia, it’s her. She has a strength I guess I never truly knew she had. I am in awe of everything she has come through to turn her life around. I don’t know if I would have been able to make it through all that she’s dealt with in her life and not been crushed under its weight.

I am so proud of her.